The New Christians

As other bloggers have noted, putting the Christianity21 experience into words is nearly impossible. In short, it went even better than Doug and I imagined it. All of the pieces came together beautifully.

In fact, when people repeatedly stopped me in the hallways on the first day to say how well they thought it was going, I found myself giving the same response over and over: “The energy in that room is amazing.”

If you want to find out about the nuts and bolts of C21, see this link for mui links, names, books, etc.

And you can read about all of the presenters here. I dare not single out any of the presentations, since so many of them were so, so good. I’d rather write about my overall impressions of the event.

Due to snow in the Twin Cities, several C21 participants got held over for another night here, allowing us to revel in the glories of the gathering for another day. But today holds a couple more airport runs, some packing, and beginning to decide what’s next for JoPa.

At Jay Bakker’s request, I will be posting about the event, at length, in the next couple days. Until then, enjoy the images of Courtney Perry:

I’m busy the next couple days, co-producing Christianity21 — a gathering that promises to be unique on the Christian event landscape. Here’s the Twitter feed for the event, a great way to listen in on what we’re doing:

Here’s a passage from my book, The New Christians, about my experience with one Christian euphemism while in college:

Back on campus, I chafed under some of the policies of Campus
Crusade. First, a glass ceiling inhibited women from ever achieving the coveted
position of campus director. When I asked about this, I got fuzzy arguments
from scripture–it turns out that Crusade doesn’t necessarily bar women from top
leadership positions, but the general discomfort with women’s leadership is a
part of a particular angle on biblical interpretation. This was lost on me at
the time, since I’d grown up at a church with ordained women ministers.

Second, we were being trained in so-called cold-call evangelism.
What that meant was, once per month, we left the MnM rally and spread across
campus to evangelize the unbelievers. A partner and I (because Jesus sent out
his followers two by two) went to the dorm we were assigned and began knocking
on doors. When a door was answered, we’d ask, “Are you willing to take a short
survey?” to which any undergrad who’d like to avoid homework answered, “Yes.”

My Blog Has MovedDear Readers,
After a year with Beliefnet, I've decided to move to my own domain for my blogging. It's been a fine year -- some things worked, other things didn't. But in the end, I'll be a better blogger on my own. My thanks to the Bnet editorial staff; they've been very supportive.
Ple

Social Media for PastorsFollowing up on Christianity21, we at JoPa Productions are developing a series of boot camps for pastors who want to learn about and utilize social media tools like blogging, Twitter, and Facebook. These are one-day, hands-on learning experiences, currently offered in the Twin Cities and soon

Ending Christian Euphemisms: "Fundamentalist"I've taken some heat in the comment section for using yesterday's post on "unbiblical" and a "higher view of scripture" as a thin foil for my own disregard of biblical standards. To the contrary, I was pointing to the use of the word unbiblical as a stand-in for a particularly thin hermeneutic. Ther

Why You Should Get GENERATELast week at Christianity21, GENERATE Magazine debuted. With the tag line, "an artifact of the emergence conversation," it fit perfectly at the gathering. When I actually got around to reading it last weekend, I was truly surprised at how good it is.There have been several efforts to begin a paper j